


Absolution

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Character Death, Childhood Lovers, Heavy Angst, Heavy religious undertones, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Mentions of James and his perfect parenting, Song Inspired, Suicide, Underage Smoking, unfaithful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 17:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Lone Wanderer had gone on month long binges, alcohol and new partners every night, leaving Butch alone and wondering why he was no longer good enough for his childhood sweetheart.





	Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> You ever find a new song and think “damn, I guess I gotta make a fic for this”? Pssh me neither. Also, bonus reader points (yes that’s a thing) if you actually know what song it is. It’s worth a listen, I promise. 
> 
> You can probably tell that I’m just about married to the trope of characters hating themselves enough to actively avoid love/intimacy. I like em’ sad and problematic I guess. Sue me. 
> 
> Unbeta’d because who even reads anymore? Yell at me if there’s mistakes.

The bathroom should have paled in comparison to everything else Butch had been forced to see prior. It wasn’t the years of abuse he’d withstood, nor his life outside the vault filled violence and fear. No, instead it was an abandoned motel room in a sunken ship, with alcohol stained carpeting, tacked to metal flooring. Dirty bedsheets and pillows damp with tears and vomit. A pathetic place to call home. An even more upsetting one to die in.  
The bathroom was a scene of melancholy truth, forcing the true reality of The Wasteland back into Butch’s mind. A reminder that the end is inevitable, especially when you’re vying for it. The tile floors glistened with a thick, crimson coating. Bright red and pooling beneath a pale body, contrasting against its white skin.  
Artificial light made it all seem picture-perfect, lit up brightly like one of those old, pre-war family photos. What a sickening parallel. Pangs of guilt pounded in his chest, sewing knots of twine inside his throat that made breathing an ordeal. Boiling sorrow settling in his gut with a panic alongside it that he couldn’t fathom. Fearing, as though it would prevent what had already happened.

His body was lean and jagged, more muscle and sinew than soft skin and fat. It wasn’t always like that, and he missed the days when it wasn’t. His hands has roamed the skin of his lover—in their younger years— not knowing the softness as a warning, or its ill-fated future. 

The Lone Wanderer knew himself as the embodiment of selfishness. As though he was a living sin. Deadly to himself and others. He sold himself short his whole life and Butch was always there to counter it. Offer himself up, show Lone how wrong he was. But Lone couldn’t see past that which was engrained in him, that he was sin. Taking a life as early as birth and being reminded of it every day. He was sin. 

He never paid any mind to the Gods he feared prided of hard times. They were dusty old scriptures in his mind. Passages recited with no care or meaning behind them. He felt their weight when he was younger, when his father would put the fear inside him and let him grow around it. Become it. His sins were real and they made him who he was. James made sure of that. But to many, he was just The Lone Wanderer. The Wateland’s hero. A man coming out of nowhere, crawling bruised and broken out of a vault with a trail of bad mistakes behind him, and a father not wroth the chase ahead of him. He’d allowed the waters of life to flow freely to the people of Te Capital Wasteland. Given food and shelter and justice to those who couldn’t obtain it themselves. Either too pitiful or selfish to do it without help. 

Yet after all that, he still could only see his flaws. His sins in the eyes of his father, and of the god he was made to fear. To James, and to him, that was the way it should have been. He craved for his sins to be absolved. But the comfort of a lover nor the water’s of a holy land could deliver. Absolution was unobtainable. 

His absolution would come, in due time.

The wanderer felt as though his soul was seeping from him, leaking from close, stark lines across his flesh. His last attempt at absolution. Saving raiders and radioactive abominations the trouble of doing it themselves. His last sight had been of a steel door. The last sound he heard being of hard porcelain against his head. The last sensation being a strange wetness on his hands, congealing between his fingers. 

——

Butch hadn’t visited the wanderer in a few days. Lone had said that he ‘needed time’. But what’s time to an eternity? Darkness that could envelope with warmth. No more ‘breaks’ needed. No more ‘time off’. No more ‘we need to see other people’. Just a blank slate, so blatantly denied by fate, and now so easily obtained by him. When the lord wouldn’t grant Lone peace, in the end, he could get it himself. Through the pain, would he finally know the pleasure of peace. 

Butch stood in an empty hallway, down in what he would call the shit-end of Rivet City. Wet and corroded walls seeping with algae and mold stung his nose. He hesitated before turning the doorknob, looking up at the letters of a rented room above him. ‘Room 24’. Butch spent a few days wondering just how rewarding this trip could possibly be. What should he expect? What would he actually gain from visiting the doc’s boy during another one of his self-loathing spells. He’d learned a long time ago not to push him when things got bad. That sometimes wallowing was exactly what he needed. But not this time, he decided. 

Butch sighed through his nose, stifling a cringe at the putrid smell, and turned the steel knob. There was no give. 

He’s never locked it. Why now. 

It took time, the pointed end of his switchblade, and a lot of self-reassurance before he finally got the lock broken. He pushed the metal door open, stepped inside and immediately covered his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. The room was falling apart. Trash and clothes were splayed across the floor, furniture filled with insects and coated in alcohol stains. The stench of vomit assaulted his senses as he crossed the threshold. Paper bags littered the countertops and a plate of spoiled YumYum deviled eggs was discarded beside a trash can, overflowing with garbage. 

It wasn’t as he remembered it. The image of the room was clearer in his mind, like he’d memorized every aspect of a painting. How it was before things took a turn and his lover’s soul was burdened with such heavy guilt. Memories and actions pushed guilt deep inside him, driving a wedge between them in the process. Seeds of doubt were sewn into a love he didn’t think he deserved. 

Doubt for himself, for his actions, and for the gentle sin of indulging. The Wanderer had lived hard, and loved harder to counter it. Knowing the touch of a lover falling soft on his skin. Fingers pulling at flesh and nails breaking the surface, chasing the high of a new flame each night, despite the one that waited so patiently for him at home. For Butch, their home. 

It’s what brought about the words of an ending, the epilogue to a fiery story, blowing out the flames in the hearts of broken lovers. 

Butch ran a hand across his forehead, gripping the bridge of his nose, covered in scars and lines that made him seem matured beyond his years. He surveyed the room, using the soft, emerald glow of his Pipboy to scan furniture and blankets. Opening doors and eyeing corners, seeking the warm body he’d abandoned days ago under the mutual understanding that they needed time. Or what he felt was mutual, at least. 

The living area gave no rewards. He sidled through the kitchen and the small bedroom, searching, but to no avail. 

He exited the small bedroom, sighing in relief as he crossed the threshold to escape its close walls. Littered with frayed artwork and peeling wallpaper that reminded him a little too much of home. Of the steel walls that held him tighter than he’d ever liked. He lingered at its doorway though, checking his Pipboy for signs of life across the local map, green or red dots indicative of danger, or allies. 

But none were present. 

He sighed deeply, tapping his finger impatiently against the doorframe. He fought the urge to break out a lighter and a cigarette pack, prompted by the safety of his apparent seclusion. 

He could remember the warm smoke as it cascaded, bellowing out from between chapped lips. Gathering in the lungs of another as mouths pressed together. The smoke mixing between them. Their limbs as intertwined as their tongues, a shared breath. 

Or the smoke of a campfire, hidden beneath a crumbling, concrete building. The smoke lifting in foul clouds up to the ceiling, painting it in dark and angry soot. The moment he’d stared up at it, letting his eyes trail its path up through cracks in the concrete and pretended not to hear his lover talk about how far apart they’d become as a couple. How he felt like he’d been better off in the arms of someone else when Butch couldn’t deliver enough of what he wanted. 

He grimaced and tried to forget how the wanderer had been so aloof. His hand found its way into his hair, the single curl that hung over his eyes, untouchable by grease or pomade, that he’d twirl absentmindedly. 

A room he hadn’t paid any mind to seemed to flicker to life. The single, pale white light that crept underneath the closed door casting shadows on the carpeted floor. It seemed to whisper to him. His hand slid across the rough and jagged steel of the bedroom’s door frame, feeling like he’d abandoned his post as he began moving away.  
The room screamed painful assumptions at him, ideas which he gritted his teeth and pushed to the back of his mind. A room having gone unnoticed, it couldn’t be a coincidence. But like an eloquent song, it seemed to sing to him at the same time, lighting sparks under his imagination as he thought up the sickening scenarios that crossed him. 

A large shadow, wide, and low to the ground could be seen on the other side of the door. The shadow cast by a single light he knew stood mounted above the sink. His heart dropped down to the deepest level, his hands extending to turn the knob and stopping, twitching apprehensively, wondering if what was on the other side should really be seen. But the ache in his muscles that begged to be soothed by the touch of his lover, they ushered him forward, chasing that fire that burned so hot and so good inside his heart. 

He shouldn’t have been so surprised. The ground couldn’t— hell, god himself— couldn’t hold back the will of the Lone Wanderer. His body had traipsed through vaults and rivers, covered in mildew and soot as he emerged with determination. There was no place he couldn’t go. Wouldn’t go. It was his nature to wander and others came to him seeking help.  
And the Lone Wanderer himself craved the very help he gave to others, and the kind of love he was given was still never enough. Because his heart had ached for approval for so many years, his father aloof and distant, his mother incinerated like the rest of the empty bodies of the vault. 

He found comfort in the darkest corners of the vault, his limbs entangled with that of another teen. Giving the fire he needed to sate that desire, burning hot under his skin. Savoring the soft skin of his boyfriend in secret, unknowing of how the wasteland would one day harden it, turn it to something abased and jaded. Hardened beyond the years it’d been given. 

A lifeless body was about the size of what he was expecting. Skin assaulted with stark lines and red liquid that glistened so bitterly against artificial light. A sight to behold in how a life so precious could be willingly taken, not to mention by its own hands. 

Butch dropped to his knees, not minding the pain that surged through his bones from the impact. His eyes glazed over, welling up at the corners with the same salty fluid he’d spent so many years bottling up. 

 

“You’re sayin’ this ain’t your fault?” Butch asked incredulously, swiping a damp rag over a bleeding wound. 

“Look nosebleed-“ he continued. “I think this a’ new level of stupid, even for you.” He sighed, pressing his hand against Lone’s torn flesh. The edges of the wound were jagged and angry, rising above the rest of his skin to make what would surely become a long-lasting scar. Looked over bitterly because of the memories tied to it. 

“I mean, didn’t your daddy ever teach you to take better care o’ yourself?” Butch lifted the rag off Lone’s shoulder, surveying the wound before casting a disapproving look to its bearer. A scoff filled the disquiet room. 

“Yeah, o’course he did. But I musta’ been absent on the lessons about fuckin’ with supermutant camps.” Lone gave a breathy laugh, stopping it short to wince at the waves of pain that spread through his shoulder. 

Butch pressed the rag down harder, giving a strong pressure against the mangled cut to stop blood from escaping. 

Lone cast his eyes down to the floor. He tended to regret most of his actions, and this one wouldn’t be any exception. “Man, they sure do love their meat piles.” He was practically mumbling to himself more than Butch

“Remind me again nosebleed, why were you digging through supermutant trash in the first place?” His free hand rested against the counter, taking some of the load off from having to care for the reckless wanderer. “I mean, it kind of seems counter- how’d you say it?” Butch thought for a moment. “Eh, counterproductive.” 

Lone chuckled a bit, trying to pay no mind to the pain it caused in his shoulder and across his collarbone. 

“You never know what kinds of bits and bobbles they hide in places like that.” He enthused. “I’m tellin’ you— Butch, I’m serious.” 

A smile had found its way to Butch’s face, quicker than he had time to stop. He had heard the stories before, and he didn’t know why he expected a different answer. Maybe something a little more intelligent this time. 

“I’m serious. One time, I found a stack a’ caps in one of those meat piles, or whatever they’re called.” He waved his hand in the air, rolling it along with the syllables to get his point across. ‘Talking with his hands’, as his father had put it. 

Butch gave a half-hearted scoff at the wanderer’s claim. He didn’t have any reason to doubt the stories spun by his lover, but he would imagine it’d make for some playful teasing.  
He raised an eyebrow at Lone, giving the best disbelieving smirk he could muster. 

“Butch, babe, I ever lied to ya’?” 

The use of the nickname was so casual, crossing his lips like it had few times before. Established as an unspoken gesture, calls of faith and love given in the form of names. New titles shared and eagerly accepted. 

It broke his facade, his eyebrows leveling and stunning him briefly, until his smirk turned to a warm smile. The wanderer was passionate about being right, he supposed. Wide-eyed and eager to prove the validity of his claims to his boyfriend. Boyfriend. 

“I’m not sure. I mean, you probably have...“ He playfully mused as his voice trailed off, tilting his head as if truly considering it. A pinky was quickly shoved in his face as a result, torn cuticles around a dirty nail. 

“I’m serious.” The wanderer’s tone was just above a whisper, deathly serious. 

“A pinky prom- what are you, five?” 

“Just take it.” 

Butch looked over his hand, and the pinky extended to him. His eyes bounced between the wanderer and his hand, his eyebrows lifting at the other boy and his gesture, his test, of faith. 

He lifted his pinky, wrapping it tightly around Lone’s. His eyes meeting the other boy’s in a serious contact that sent a shudder down his spine, their close contact turning into a genuine display of truth and honesty, no matter how juvenile it seemed. 

Blue irises met brown ones, humor turning to warm admiration in one pair, and determination in the other. 

The young wanderer gave an assuring nod. “Promise.” Prompting Butch to say the same. 

His heart could barely beat between the syllables, as he quickly responded. 

“Promise.” 

 

A jagged scar, the memory of trust established when it was created, bathed now in pale white light. The head of its owner laying limp against porcelain, his hands falling in puddles of crimson. Staining tiles and weighing heavy in the heart of an onlooker, stricken by grief and regret. 

The skin he’d worshipped once, the hands he’d held, the pinky he’d clutched tightly in his own. Now coated in congealing ooze, red fluid covering the supple flesh that once awed him. 

A thin frame he’d never touch again, skin that would never feel the same, hold it’s familiar and comforting warmth. 

The fire that the Lone Wanderer had ignited within his heart burned hotter than it ever had, through times of both infatuation, and cold distancing. And how fitting, that it should be hottest in a time like this, having the light of his lover snuffed out in front of him, longing for more contact than it would ever receive. 

The wanderer was foul and ill in his own eyes, his body merely a vessel for mistakes to be made. Absolution, he thought, would be found in the sharp edge of a razor blade, completely overlooking the comfort available in the arms of his boyfriend.

A comfort he couldn’t imagine himself indulging in again, tainting flesh he viewed as pure and kind. 

A string of bad luck would befall the wasteland. It’s recent events being for the worse, it seemed. It’s savior begging for the waters of a kind and fruitful life to flow along his path, take him away. Never again minding the years of imprisonment within a vault, nor the days of pressure and stress in a merciless wasteland above it. And the savior’s seemingly second half falling into the waters as well, chasing a buoy that had been popped long ago. 

 

My baby never fret none  
About what my hands and my body done  
If the lord don’t forgive me  
I’d still have my baby and my babe would have me

When my time comes around  
Lay me gently in the cold dark earth  
No grave can hold my body down  
I’ll crawl home to her

**Author's Note:**

> Lads. Look. Don’t listen to Hozier sing about sad lovers while writing. It’s gonna influence your work just a bit. This wasn’t intended to be a public story since I literally made it on a whim at 12:34 am, but I liked it enough, so why not. 
> 
> Again- I barely read this, so feel free to correct any mistakes/errors I may have missed.


End file.
